Daily Beast: Trump refugee admission reduction results in collateral damage to government contractors

No kidding!

I have to steel myself to write AGAIN about the issue of the President’s legal right to set the annual CAP (aka ceiling) for the number of refugees to be invited to the US to become your new neighbors.  But, I know how important repetition (to the point of wanting to barf) is!

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Bixby at twitter:   @scottbix

In fact, as I read the Daily Beast story by Scott Bixby, I was heartened to see that maybe after all these years the facts about the program are beginning to be reported and understood.

Progress is being made!

Reporter Bixby actually did some good reporting when he said that many of the contractors are 97% federally funded on a refugee per capita basis.  (You know that, but believe me the average voting American doesn’t!).

Most reports by the Leftwing lapdog media about these federal contractors, aka VOLAGs, leave readers and viewers with a wrong assumption that they are paying for all of their ‘humanitarian good works’ from their own charitable pockets.  It ain’t so!

Before I get into the latest whinefest by the contractors*** consider one of my primary fundamental concerns:

Taxpayers should not be required to pay large (any!) salaries and supply non-profits with cushy office space only to have those same non-profits act as political community organizers and agitators for not just more refugees, but for more migrants, legal and illegal, trying to get to the US.

The story is entitled:

The New Collateral Damage in Trump’s War on Refugees

The Trump administration has cut the number of refugees they let into the country by a third. That decision could gravely harm organizations that assist those already here.

(Emphasis is mine)

When the Trump administration announced its intention to slash the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States to the lowest level in nearly four decades, the decision sparked worry among thousands of displaced persons who feared that the nation’s doors were now closed to them. But in addition to the record number of global refugees seeking safety from unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the admissions cap will likely also harm organizations designed to help the thousands of displaced people who do make it safely to the United States.

As the U.S. government slows the number of legal refugees who can enter the country to a trickle, the nine private voluntary agencies with cooperative agreements with the State Department to help settle those refugees must now contend with a potentially devastating budget crunch.

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Reporter Bixby picked the wrong contractor to quote. The International Rescue Committee headquartered in Manhattan is headed by David Miliband, a British national, sucking down a nearly $700,000 annual salary as the NON-PROFIT organization fires lower level staff. The IRC received $846 million from the US Treasury since 2008.

“It’ll have a tremendous impact on the number of people who are able to access these life-saving services,” Nazanin Ash [working for Miliband—ed]  vice president of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee, told The Daily Beast. “There’ve been over 150 office closures over the last two years, and that shutters a vital resource in many communities across the country.”

[….]

Government grants, provided on a per capita basis tied to the number of refugees assisted, account for as much as 97 percent of the resettlement grants for these organizations. Lower resettlement admissions therefore mean fewer federal dollars—and program funding is now set to plummet as precipitously as the number of admitted refugees.

That loss in grant money threatens a funding shortfall that could endanger community-based resettlement offices nationwide, as well as programs intended to help those who have fled their homes to establish a life in the United States, from housing placement and food support to professional support, English classes and community integration.

[….]

Under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the president has the sole authority, following consultation with Congress, to determine the maximum number of refugees who can be resettled in the United States, called the Presidential Determination. Under President Donald Trump, the Presidential Determination was decreased from 110,000 in 2017 to 45,000 refugees in 2018, one-seventh of its peak. Even then, the cap is a limit, not a requirement—so far, only 20,918 refugees have actually been admitted to the United States this year.

Don’t miss my post on the myth of Obama’s 110,000 ceiling, here where I said this:

Never once in his previous 7 years did he propose a ceiling (a cap!) that high and he came no where near that number of refugees admitted.

LOL! Now they are really stretching.

Below Melanie Nezer of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (which received $186 million from the US Treasury since 2008) says, because of that meany Trump, you are being deprived of the joy, of not getting to know refugees who might have been placed in your towns.

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If it was going to be such a positive thing to open more communities for refugee placement, then why did the Obama State Department keep those sites under consideration secret from us?

Do not forget that these nine contractors were working closely with the US State Department in the Obama years to locate as many as 40 new resettlement sites and it was all being kept secret from you—the citizens of the 40 or so new targets.

If you were to benefit so much from being ‘chosen’ then why were they keeping those sites secret?

See Judicial Watch sues State Department for new sites under consideration!

The Daily Beast continues:

Nezer cautioned that the grant reduction won’t just negatively affect the refugees they’re intended to serve, but may foster a sense of isolation and complacency among native-born Americans.

“Fewer resettlement offices means fewer opportunities for people to volunteer and work with refugees,” Nezer explained. “If fewer refugees come, and fewer Americans get to engage directly with refugees, that kind of starts a cycle where there’s less direct connection” with refugee populations.

“As fewer comes and fewer Americans get to have that relationship, then there’s less support for letting refugees in at all.”

There is much more in this story, but its getting way too long.

Read it all here, see that reporter Bixby, trying to make a case for bipartisan support for the program, tells us how angry REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate are at the President for not consulting them as the law stipulates.  See my post here on that.

These R’s are just a bunch of phony-baloneys who cared not one whit about past consultation requirements when numbers were large!

Many only care about one thing—cheap labor for their pals at global corporations and at the Chamber of Commerce!

 

***Here below are the nine federal refugee resettlement contractors.

You might be sick of seeing this list almost every day, but a friend once told me that people need to see something seven times before it completely sinks in, so it seems to me that 70, or even 700 isn’t too much!

And, besides I have new readers every day.

The present US Refugee Admissions Program will never be reformed if the system of paying the contractors by the head stays in place and the contractors are permitted to act as Leftwing political agitation groups, community organizers and lobbyists paid on our dime!

And, to add insult to injury they pretend it is all about ‘humanitarianism.’

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees into your towns and cities and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)!  And, get them registered to vote eventually!

From my most recent accounting, here.  However, please see that Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies has done an update of their income, as has James Simpson at the Capital Research Center!

Open Borders Leftists are mean and increasingly unhinged; HIAS demonstrates just how much!

The hypocrisy of the Left has been on full display with perhaps the ultimate example of that surrounding the McCain funeralathon we witnessed (or tried to escape from viewing!) recently.  They talk a good game about civility, but make no mistake, Leftists are mean people. 

Forget vigorous debates about policy directions! It is personal destruction that is the primary weapon for the people who claim they are on the side of all that is right and good.

 

Stephen Millers uncle

 

I wasn’t planning to write about how the Hard Leftists in the Open Borders movement have been showcasing Leftwing family members of key players in the Trump sphere, most notably White House adviser Stephen Miller’s uncle (and his childhood rabbi is also out demeaning Miller), but did you see they have now dragged out Laura Ingraham’s estranged Leftwing brother to attack her in social media?  It is shameful.

I wasn’t going to write about all this, that is, until I saw this story at Jewish Exponent where we see that federal refugee contractor, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is showcasing Miller’s uncle at their media events!  What a ‘get’, as they likely high-five each other!

I repeat, Leftists are very mean people.

Agencies Address Refugee Program Concerns

 

A graph set up against the wall in the Nationalities Services Center (NSC) had towers of blue bars, varying in heights.

 

HIAS Philadelphia
No mention of how many people were in the audience. And, no caption for the photo.  That must be Miller’s mean Leftist uncle on the right.

 

The bars represent U.S. refugee resettlement arrivals from fiscal year 1980 — where the ceiling was set to 200,000 — to today with the fiscal year 2019 projection. The annual ceiling is now set at 45,000. Projections indicate that number could change to just 25,000.

In response, NSC, HIAS Pennsylvania and Bethany Christian Services of Greater Delaware Valley joined together to hold a panel discussion and conference on Sept. 6 about the dangers a drop that low could present for these agencies and the refugees they serve.

The danger that the biased media rarely mentions is that refugee contractors, like HIAS (one of nine contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in the US), which got nearly $25 million from US taxpayers in a recent year and whose CEO makes a cool $300,000+ annual salary, are in danger of losing their sugar daddy—Uncle Sam!

The Jewish Exponent continues….

The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program is on “life support,” NSC executive director Margaret O’Sullivan said.

“We are here to call attention to the potential evisceration of a program that has served as a point of pride for this nation for 40 years,” she said. “The current administration has been dismantling the program with stealth and with precision.”

As is usual, HIAS paraded out the most deserving refugees they could find, but clearly their star attraction was Stephen Miller’s uncle.

David S. Glosser, a neuropsychologist who volunteers with HIAS and gained name recognition for penning an essay condemning his nephew, Stephen Miller — senior adviser to Trump — and his anti-refugee remarks, shared the story of ancestors facing anti-Semitism and seeking refuge.

[….]

When he mentioned his family receiving help from Hebrew Immigrant and Aid Society as it was called then, HIAS PA Executive Director Cathryn Miller-Wilson smiled.

Longtime readers know that a few years back the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society dropped the ‘Hebrew’ from its name and became simply HIAS. There was never any coherent explanation about why they dropped the ‘Hebrew.’  Were they ashamed of the word?

I suspected that it had something to do with the fact that they place Muslim refugees and perhaps some of those refugees were squeamish about the word ‘Hebrew.’ Just a guess!

What follows next at the Jewish Exponent is a naive discussion about how today’s refugees (like those from the Middle East and Africa) are just like the Jewish refugees of yesteryear.  Of course they aren’t for a couple of reasons.

When Miller’s ancestors came, they were mostly culturally Europeans and there was no massive welfare system to support them. They worked hard and made it on their own with the help of their family. If they didn’t make it, they went back to the old country.

There was no taxpayer-funded NGO to take care of their every need!

Then here is the wrap of course!

….he and Miller-Wilson stressed, reach out to elected officials and vote.

More here.

Message to you also!  Reach out to elected officials and VOTE!

I have a huge archive on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, click here for more.

For previous posts on Stephen Miller, go here.

Attorney General Sessions orders review of Justice Department’s ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center

The New York Post editorial yesterday is entitled:

The SPLC’s terrible year just got worse

 

It’s been a rough year for the Southern Poverty Law Center — deservedly so. And it just got more difficult, thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The SPLC, formed in 1971 as an aggressive civil-rights nonprofit law firm, has become the left’s go-to arbiter of what constitutes a hate group. Its pronouncements are quoted without challenge by the news media, and it has an endowment of $300 million, enriched by major corporate donors.

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The Leftwing media loves to cite the SPLC.  Here is the SPLC’s hate expert-in-chief, Heidi Beirich, on MSNBC  https://www.splcenter.org/about/staff/heidi-beirich

Yet its overly broad definition of “hate” often goes far beyond truly vile outfits to include people and groups that simply don’t toe a politically correct line. That’s why the SPLC two months ago had to pay $3.4 million and publicly apologize to Maajid Nawaz, whom it had falsely labeled an “anti-Muslim extremist.” (He’s actually a practicing Muslim who opposes extremism.)

But that didn’t stop the Star-Ledger last week from devoting an editorial to denouncing New Jersey’s ICE spokesman, Emilio Dabul, for his “links” (as supplied by the SPLC) to “anti-Muslim fanatics.” This, even though the Star-Ledger admitted that Dabul’s own writings “showed no anti-Muslim bias.” It was all guilt by association — right from the SPLC playbook.

Now Sessions has ordered a review to ensure the Justice Department no longer partners with the SPLC and other groups that “unfairly defame Americans.”

[….]

…Sessions charged, it uses its hate-group designations “as a weapon” to “bully and intimidate” organizations of which it simply doesn’t approve.

[….]

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who’s also been smeared by the SPLC as an “anti-Muslim extremist,”*** has noted, the group these days is invested more in “profiting off the anxieties and white guilt of Northern liberals” than in actually upholding civil rights.

Sessions’ review is long overdue, and follows other government agencies that have backed away from the SPLC. It’s time for those who still merely parrot its smears to start taking a closer look.

More here.

If you are looking for something to do, you need to complain to your local paper or TV station any time they use the SPLC as a credible source to define “hate groups.”

 

***The SPLC was forced to remove its now infamous Anti-Muslim Extremist list that included yours truly, see here.

Targeting Refugee Resettlement Watch and anyone questioning refugee resettlement for their towns and cities was initiated by a Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society study in 2013 which explicitly asked that the SPLC investigate us.  Here is a quote from that study (my post is here).  Earlier in the report they mentioned RRW by name.

Conduct Research on Local Anti-Refugee Leaders: The national refugee agencies should partner with groups such as Center for New Community and Southern Poverty Law Center to learn more about individuals and groups leading local efforts to resist resettlement, to determine if they belong to organized anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim organizations or networks.

Remember that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, as one of nine federal resettlement contractors, is dependent on your tax dollars for more than half of the group’s income!

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society: Send $$$ so we can continue to fight the Prez and work with Islamic Relief

I told you again about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) here the other day.
They are one of nine federal contractors receiving millions of your tax dollars annually, AND they were a lead organization suing the Trump Administration over the travel ban.
Raising private money is a good thing, but….
Why should we be required to pay for more than half of their budget for their pet projects (including working to encourage more migrants to cross the US border) as outlined by their President and CEO in an appeal for funds today:
 
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In case you didn’t know, Mr. Hetfield makes an annual salary of over $300,000!  If private donors want to pay that salary that is their business, but taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for any of it!

 
Let them raise all of their funding from private donations!
Ask your members of Congress and US Senators over the upcoming break why you should have to pay one dime for their political activities! ($24.5 million of your tax dollars in 2016 alone!)
 
 
 

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society urges followers to take to the streets in wake of Supreme Court decision

The Trump Administration has been an unrelenting 17 month assault against America’s values as a nation welcoming of immigrants and refugees.

(Mark Hetfield, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)

 
You all know what happened in the Supreme Court yesterday.  In a nutshell, the court affirmed that the President of the US has the power to limit immigration.
However, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society one of the primary groups that sued the Administration from day one about the so-called Muslim ban isn’t giving up and is urging its followers to participate in anti-Trump rallies coordinated by Linda Sarsour’s group MPower!
 

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That is HIAS ‘Refugees Welcome’ banner as they protested with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) against the President in January of this year.   https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2018/01/28/church-world-service-and-hias-join-cair-to-protest-at-white-house/

 
Sure, they should have free speech, but not on the taxpayer’s dime!
Continue reading “Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society urges followers to take to the streets in wake of Supreme Court decision”